Silhouettes
by Folsensory
Summary: - "Just because you don't show your dread, it doesn't mean that you can't always feel it lingering" - Inspired by the song "Silhouettes" by Of Monsters And Men -


_"A thousand Silhouettes, dancing on my chest..."_

* * *

"Dove, wake up!"

Clive shot up from his hard and rickety and uncomfortable bed, his back straight and arms braced on the bed's frame. He breathed in sharply, then let it all out at once. He had heard a yell... And... Clanging?

"What..?!" He said in a low tone, though sounding panicked. He jerked his head to his right; the light from the hallway was blinding. Clive squinted and held up a weak hand to help block the light. He was having trouble making out the figure of the person who had woken him up. After noticing the figure's height and apparent weight, Clive knew who it was. "Phillip?" He croaked out from his dry throat, seeing the man on the other side of his cell door holding a police baton, "Why did you-"

"You was havin' a nightmare. Makin' all kinds of noises." The jail guard, Phillip, explained. "Now shut yer trap and go back to sleep, ya hear? We don't need no one wakin' up anyone more in this cell block." Phillip retracted his baton from in between the cell bars and clipped it back onto his belt, which Clive was surprised he could even locate, given the fact that his belly hung right over it.

As Philip turned away and walked back down the empty hallway, Clive relaxed his muscles and laid down again. His regular orange shirt and pants had been sent for washing the morning before, so he had to settle with wearing an older black and white striped shirt he had stashed away for times like this. Clive tugged up one of the sleeves that had fallen over his shoulder; the shirt was far too large for his thinner frame.

Still in a daze, he turned onto his side on the bed and rested his head on the thin pillow, huffing and begging desperately for sleep to come back to him. He'd done this a thousand times before, as it was the fourth year he'd been in this jail cell. This time shouldn't have been any different. Although, having a nightmare was so unlike him. He hadn't even dreamed on his first night in the jail.

Wait

Suddenly, Clive couldn't even come to close his eyes. Every time he tried, a pang of... Something, knocked on his ribs from the insides of his chest. Could it be his heart..? No, the pain was much deeper than that. The feeling was heavy and dark, and he winced whenever his eyelids sunk past halfway closed. Clive flipped over onto his back again, feeling his eyes becoming dry, but the pressure on his chest only increased. His square hand crept from being draped across his waist to lay on his chest. He tapped a steady beat on his collarbone with his fingertips, just a bit slower than his heartbeat. Clive breathed shaky breaths, but soon his eyelids began to flutter and his mind fell half asleep...

"Hmm..."

* * *

Shadows. There were shadows. They began as just one large mass of murky black smoke, but Clive watched as it twisted and writhed, spitting out pieces of itself in every direction. Each piece then began to morph upward, slowly growing appendages. Clive blinked once, and suddenly each piece had moulded itself into what looked like many people. They had no eyes to see, but Clive began to feel uneasy, as if they were staring him down. He opened his mouth, unsure if he wanted to speak to the unusual forms in front of him, or call out for help. The forms grew taller, continuing to spawn more and more of themselves. Clive swivelled his head from side to side, looking up at the forms and trying to stay as far back as he could.

"W-what is this..?" He finally sputtered to himself, his voice, although quiet, echoing through the white expanse around him. Clive staggered backward, only to trip over his own unsteady feet and fall to the solid ground. As the noise of his hard impact resonated around him, the forms all seized their morphing. Clive stared at them, almost in horror, as there were about a few hundred of these beings, all ink-black with misshapen features. He blinked again, and suddenly the figures had him completely surrounded. A low mumble began about the crowd; Clive could not distinguish what they were saying.

 _"It was you! You killed me!"_ Clive's head whipped to his far right toward the male-sounding voice, clenching his fists against the ground he lay sprawled on.

"Who said that?!" He demanded, a familiar pain starting in the depths of his chest again. The brown bangs that hung on his forehead began to stick to his skin with sweat.

 _"My mumma is gone.. And now so am I!"_ A small child's voice spoke from the crowd of forms; Clive snapped his head over to his left.

"What are you talking about?!" He yelled in the direction of the voice. Several more voices began to scream out accusations towards Clive all at once, forcing him to turn in circles to try and keep up. He didn't kill these.. Things. What were they talking about? Along with the growing pain in his chest, a spot on Clive's temples began to sting as well. He sat cross-legged, moving one hand to claw at his chest and the other to press to the sides of his forehead. He writhed forward in pain, shoulders hunched, as hundreds of echoing voices around him filled his ears.

 _"How could you be so selfish?"_

 _"Did you even think?"_

 _"You disgusting being."_

 _"I had to leave my family behind because of you."_

 _"Hundreds of lives wasted for you to claim the justice you never even got!"_

"S-STOP!" Clive shouted back, but he could hardly hear his own voice over the others. His eyes were squeezed so tightly that memories began to play on them like a slideshow. The underground city, the Thames, the fortress... Wait, _his_ fortress... Breaking through the earth, and London...

Clive threw himself forward again, now on his hands and knees. His chest, his chest... Clive felt like his sternum was breaking down the middle, his ribs were going to crack, and his lungs and heart were going to cease all at the at the same time. He gasped and choked like he was being strangled, although only his own hand was around his neck.

It was him. Clive _did_ kill those people. Their blood was on his hands; the hands that toiled day and night over paper and metal to accomplish nothing. It was his fault they were dead, due to his own failure. No, not even just his failure. Their deaths were just the blind spot in his scheme all along.

"I'M SORRY!" He screamed to the forms, his voice cracking through clenched teeth.

* * *

"DOVE!" A new voice arose, causing all of the others to stop at once.

Clive's eyes shot open again. Looking up from laying flat on his back, he registered the first things he saw. A dark concrete ceiling that was cracked inward from the edge where it met the wall. A small shelf, perched high above him, displaying a dirty and torn blue paperboy cap. The shelf and the wall itself were blanketed by the blurry shadows of a set of cell bars. And no dark figures. He blinked slowly as if to solidify the image. No more dark figures...

"Mr. Dove!" The same husky voice called again in the direction of the light, slightly more hushed this time. Clive pivoted his head toward it, the movement feeling robotic rather than smooth, and saw the same scene as last time he had awoken with such a start. Phillip had his baton drawn, but hadn't yet found the moment to use it in the same manner as before.

His mouth and tongue felt like cotton, though he found a way to speak just louder than a mumble through it. "I-is everything okay, Phillip?" Again, he squinted through the bright white light, but Clive could see the guard's chest heave and release in a heavy sigh.

"This' yer last warning, Dove. One more peep outta ya, an' I'm stuffin' ya in solitary for the rest o' the night."

Was he talking in his sleep again?

"R-right. My apologies, Phillip."

"Uh-huh." With that, the night guard vanished beyond the cell bars just as he had before. Clive turned his head back so he was staring at the ceiling again. He held a shallow breath until the main hallway light was flicked off; he wasn't sure why.

Clive slid both of his hands from his chest down to his abdomen. The only real pain he could still feel was the faint sting of scratches near his neck and collar made by his stubby nails, presumably just before he had woken up. Suddenly, it all came flooding back.

The silhouettes.

He could see them as clear as day in his mind; their voices still ringing in his ears. He could see himself, crumpled on the ground and writhing in pain beneath their towering figures. But Clive's face remained unchanged. Inside he was suffering, inside he was screaming for the forgiveness he knew he didn't deserve. His own personal hell, forever trapped inside his head, played over and over, but he had no reaction. He'd seen the same dream before and felt that same guilt so often, he didn't know what to make of it anymore. Even if he wanted to act out just to release what he continued to keep bottled up, he wouldn't be able to. He'd tried before. Clive's eyes remained half-lidded and lips slightly parted, so still that he could have been carved of stone. Thin sweeps of rusty brown hair were stuck to his forehead with sweat. His chest slightly rose and fell with every silent breath. The images and voices hardly faded, but he closed his eyes, and fell back to sleep.

* * *

 _"...No matter where I sleep, you are haunting me."_


End file.
